Student nurse using phone during procedure

DS2 is an outreach nurse. He had a student in with him who kept going on her phone to look at TikTok, when they were in the office between patients, instead of reading the necessary information he gave. He only has them for a shift, so after the third time of asking, he asked her if she wanted to be there, to which she replied “not really…” so he sent her home and emailed her tutor at the university.

He’s not toxic at all. He absolutely loves his job and wants students to do well. He’s 2 yrs into his masters, and has been putting extra hours in for free to get the hours he needs to pass, but he won’t be taken the piss out of.

They aren't going to be accurate at all if none are available and your child needs hourly obs. I can understand why parents might do it.

I still didn't find them super accurate anyway, I remember them repeating it a few times when it didn't look right and the first one was indeed incorrect. Or they would do his first obs with the ear one but then it would disappear so they'd do some with the armpit one and repeat because then the armpit one would disappear.

We wouldn’t be allowed to use them. Ours are calibrated for accuracy

No we are not allowed, infection control rules.

Honestly no student nurse is observing how to take blood and then going off to do it themselves she's probably following her mentor around. You have to do a course and then multiple practices and signs offs lots of unis and hospitals don't even let students touch iv devices until they are qualified and completed the course. I'm a paeds a&e nurse always have my phone on me as does most of the mdt in the department. There's apps websites and intranet used multiple times a day. Often the cows aren't working or there's no desktops available in the area we don't have physical copies of the BNF anymore.
I've lost track of the number of fob watches where the pin has broken or stopped working or has accidentally gone in the wash I use my phone to check the time or set timers for when I need to go back and check on a patient.
If I saw my student on her phone for the non work reasons above id have a word and remind them about professionalism but I'm not making a complaint about them unless it's a continuous thing

Don't they have those upside down watches pinned to their uniform anymore?

Would agree with you here. I did two years of a nursing degree and withdrew at the start of year three. The placements gave me panic attacks! Nurses really need to remember what it’s like to be a student - it can be a horrible place to be.
but no student should be on her phone while observing a procedure.

Surely it’s a basic safeguarding issue but as others have said, she sounds bored and not paying attention to something that will be a crucial part of her role - taking blood carefully, especially from a nervous or sick child.

It’s also grim from a hygiene perspective.

On a totally irrelevant note, I'm loving the fact that people think nurses have a locker or a changing area.

It's a good idea. Especially if they are often in hospital.

Touch wood, we've had one long hospital stay but since he's been home in January we've been able to manage at home. He'll likely need surgery in the future but I think that's a good while away yet considering we don't even have a set date.

I may bring my own thermometer and blood pressure cuff next time. 😂

I trained in the dark days. We all had an A4 book we had to lug around on placement to make our notes in, get our competencies signed off, do reflections, get our written feedback from mentors and visiting lecturers and have our attendance signed off. They got lost, fell apart, got filthy, things were spilled on them. They were checked and signed off periodically but if they went missing you could lose months of proof that you had done the work you were supposed to do. If someone was falling behind the university might not be aware for weeks. Our current students use an app. If they refused and said they simply must write everything on paper then they’d be told to catch themselves on. The system has evolved, students are expected to catch up.

Yes, any nurse who comes across a student who can’t make a bed simply needs to show them what to do. Not rocket science 🤷🏻‍♀️

This 100%! I feel so sorry for student nurses having to navigate the toxic environment on some wards. There are staff nurses that are just brutal and I can spot them a mile away. Bullies dressed in a nurses uniform.

Blood pressure cuffs would also be an issue when my son was in. They found that his arm was too big for the pediatric one but too small for the adult one but found this white one that seemed to work pretty well for him but always went walkabout!

Honestly, I never bothered buying my own thermometer because I knew that it would just get taken as they'd think it was a hospital one and we'd then never see it again. He had 2 cellular blankets that I had to save from the cleaners taking them away thinking they belonged to the hospital on many occasions. 😂

It doesn't surprise me at all. My son was an inpatient for 10 months up until the start of this year and it was certainly eye opening in many ways practically living in a hospital for that long.

Not all nurses work in hospitals - district nurses have all these issues and have to Lauder their own uniforms - only allowed new ones every 3 years. I’ve known nurses to self purchase uniforms from the employer as they’ve had their quota. Even use their own cars and aren’t reimbursed any wear and tear

Sadly they get stolen. And then you tell the ward manager you can’t do obs and she just shrugs and says there’s a spending freeze and there’s no budget! 🙈. I can remember periods of weeks/months where we were sellotaping bits of paper together as we’d run out of staples and no money to buy any.

Oh yeah, there was a huge shortage of thermometers when my son was in. At one point I believe they had 3 for 4 bays full of children on an oncology ward.

My son's heart rate was always 130 at that point so he was on hourly obs which always made things fun with everyone running around looking for a prized thermometer every hour.

And provide your own stethoscope and until recently thermometer because the ward didn’t have any. 😀. If hospitals were really fussed about infection control at this level they’d provide that level of stuff and also launder staff uniform.

Not all hospitals give nurses work phones. It wasn't the case at the hospital my son was at.

Consult connect is loaded to our work phones and we have secure log in using work credentials

I would expect that

I was more wondering about personal phones (as not all staff are given work phones)

Didn't seem to be the case at my son's hospital. I'm assuming because they didn't have work phones.

They always asked first and once it was uploaded to wherever it needed to be uploaded to they would always delete it afterwards.